Most people simply don't understand the real issues involved in deploying a network, especially in a competetive environment. Forgetting the oft misleading 'fibre optic broadband' statement pumped out by the ad agencies, it costs a small fortune to deploy fibre where it hasn't gone before, or to upgrade the fibre to be suitable for the most up-to-date DWDM kit. Just to be clear, without a robust fibre backbone, you have no high bandwith infrastructure to support anything, and everything needs a backbone, including the mobile networks. No operaters like to share their backbones unless compelled to do so politically, which means multiple networks to be paid for. The £6M quoted before is a drop in the ocean, the head end equipment alone can easily push the £1M button. Same on the mobile networks, some of the Juniper cards alone, yes an individual vertical card, can cost £250k each!
The mobile networks are the main investment calls at the moment, FTTA being a significant requirement to support those greedy little 4G smartphones we're all getting. Can you imagine the up front cost this amounts to? New antennas, RRUs, demarcation boxes, power supply units, fibre & power cables, mast, each holding 3 antennas (6 or more in urban sites), and all those new cables running to the backbone. We might need to go to femtocells too in highly urbanised locations, that would add even more to the already unbelievable costs.
As for FTTH, it's not likely to take hold in the UK any decade soon, not whilst they can squeeze more and more out of the last run coax installs. It would take legislation to force a change in this area, maybe starting with something like the latest French approach of forced 6-fibre installs in certain sized new build projects, but that is an insignificant tokenism in reality. Small wonder too that Vodafone snapped up C&WW, no more paying BT to piggyback onto their network anymore!